Climbing Mountains, Beating Aortic Valve Stenosis

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By Doug Donaldson

Heart valve replacement surgery didn't stop Veronika Meyer from climbing Mount Everest (and a few other prominent mountains).

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At the age of 46, Veronika Meyer knew something was wrong. She had little energy and was always exhausted.
           
A few years earlier, she had scaled the highest peaks of Africa and Australia, but now there were days when climbing stairs seemed impossible. It was time for surgeons to replace her leaking aortic valve—the valve that separates the left ventricle and aorta and keeps blood flowing in the correct direction. Her condition—aortic valve stenosis—was diagnosed when she was 23. It occurs because of a genetic defect or a thickening of the valve. Fatigue is a common symptom.
           
“These patients come to surgery having substantial symptoms, such as shortness of breath, chest pain, enlarged heart, or heart failure,” says Kevin Accola, M.D., cardiac surgeon at the Florida Hospital Cardiovascular Institute in Orlando. “Because of the inefficiency in the heart that the leak causes, the valve may need to be replaced.”
           
Fixing the stenosis requires an intense operation that involves opening the patient’s sternum and stopping the heart for about two hours. While the patient is on a heart and lung machine, the old valve is removed and a new one attached. Meyer’s surgery was a success. Five weeks after her operation, she was climbing mountains again, and has continued going up ever since. She reached the top of Mount Everest in early 2007, when she was 56 years old. Sponsored by St. Jude Medical, makers of artificial heart valves, Meyer is believed to be the first person with an artificial heart valve to reach the Everest summit. Ascending to heights of tens of thousands of feet has had no effect on her heart.
           
“In my work, I have to be efficient and useful for other people,” says Meyer, a research chemist and instructor at the University of Bern in Bern, Switzerland. “Mountain climbing is not useful, which is probably why I like it. I enjoy the landscape, rocks, formations, flowers, sky, and clouds. I have the drive to reach the summit, but I don’t know exactly why.”
           
Over time she has learned an important lesson that helps her reach the top: Don’t waste energy. “When I come back from a climb, my mind is completely fresh; I have an empty brain, which is wonderful,” she says. “During a climb, I’m only focused on reaching the summit, then coming down.”

Even after climbing the highest summits on each continent—a total of seven—Meyer plans to keep climbing. “We have 5,000 summits in Switzerland, so it’s not a problem,” she says with a laugh.